ATF Raids Gun Parts Store and Seizes Customer Data

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided a gun parts manufacturer over the weekend after a federal judge overturned a restraining order preventing the raid.

ATF agents equipped with M4s and plate armor conducted the raid on Ares Armor in National City, Cali. in order to seize the manufacturer’s customer data with the help of a local locksmith who cracked the safe inside the store.

The company’s owner, Dimitrios Karras, said that the ATF targeted his company under the false claim that Ares Armor was making AR-15 lower receivers, which are classified as a firearm, and then reverting them back to unfinished receivers not classified as firearms according to the law.

Even though the ATF was informed of their mistake, according to Karras, the agency proceeded with the raid anyway in order to gain access to private customer information as well as seize the company’s inventory of unfinished receivers, known as 80% receivers.

“They said either give us these 5,000 names or we’re coming in and we’re pretty much taking everything, which is a huge, huge privacy concern and something we are not willing to do,” he added.

Last week, Ares Armor successfully filed a temporary restraining order to prevent the ATF from raiding the business, but Judge Janis L. Sammartino later allowed the agency to proceed.

The ATF also raided EP Armory last week for the exact same reasons.

“We have to wonder if this raid wasn’t as much an attempt to send a message to 80% lower customers as it was a raid for user data,” Bob Owens, the editor of BearingArms.com, wrote. “Perhaps they’re attempting to scare people away from buying from these companies, so that they go out of business.”

That’s a reasonable conclusion, considering that the ATF proceeded with the raid even though the agency was in the wrong.

And it isn’t the first time a government agency has acted against a firearm accessory supplier during the Obama Administration.

Because the plant was the “the only smelter in the United States which can produce lead bullion from raw lead ore,” according to the NRA-ILA, lead for traditional ammunition is now likely imported, which means higher prices for ammo.

And in the past few years, various federal agencies have been stockpiling a massive amount of ammunition, estimated at over two billion rounds, which has contributed to ammo shortages across the country.